This November’s Scientific American has a short report on a new movement known as “experimental philosophy.” (Unfortunately, most of it is not available for non-subscribers.) The hope is that by using the methods of the social sciences, philosophers may get more insight into why people disagree about perennial philosophical problems. Already, some interesting results are in; for instance, researchers have found a correlation between belief in moral relativism and openness to seeing things from others’ perspectives—more on that in a minute.
Much of the work thus far hasn’t been up to the scientific standards needed for real confidence in specific results, and experimental methodology cannot decisively settle philosophical problems. Christians can learn from this movement, however. As it progresses, it may help us to understand why we disagree with each other, and perhaps even give us clues about what positions are correct.
For instance, one area of research in experimental philosophy has been whether people would consider criminals to be morally responsible if the criminal’s actions were completely determined by the laws of nature. This issue is part of the ancient philosophical discussion of free will: is having free will compatible with having one’s actions “fixed” beforehand by something? Christians have disagreed on the subject, sometimes with shameful results. If we can discover the sorts of considerations that pull us in one direction or the other, perhaps we can evaluate them, or at least better understand our opponents.
There is a deeper lesson that experimental philosophy can teach us as well. Much experimental philosophy focuses on the ways that irrelevant factors distort our judgment. (For instance, the order in which we consider cases influences our answers to philosophical thought experiments.) We are easily deceived, and relying mainly on our gut is a bad way to find the truth about hard topics.
So we should pause before we confidently rely on ourselves to be able to discern the truth. Christians don’t have access to the truth because we have more reliable intuition. Instead, God has revealed Himself to us in order that we don’t have to try to work out the most important things through unreliable introspection.
The recent data correlating opening to other’s perspectives and belief in moral relativism is a case in point. This new data from experimental philosophers will probably be used to argue that people who reject moral relativism do so because they cannot imagine other points of view. It may well be true that some of the more ardent popular critics of moral relativism could use some more openness to other people’s perspectives. But Christians should not worry about their belief in moral absolutes on the basis of these experiments. After all, we have been given knowledge that moral absolutes exist because of an absolutely holy God. We don’t need to say that moral absolutes must exist because we can’t imagine how someone else could have a valid point of view; we affirm that there is a moral law built into reality because the Lord of all reality has crashed into our fallible perspectives. It is trust in God, not in our own intuition, that undergirds our belief in a moral reality.
The Scientific American article should remind us that we don’t have to oppose moral relativism for the reasons the world does. Let’s oppose it because the Lord has come into history to judge and save.
Grace and peace.
Tags: Experimental philosophy, relativism, free will
